I got this one out of an old issue of Ironman magazine years ago. I used it for several cycles with very good results, about 10 years ago before I mangled my shoulders.

Can be done for any excercise, although I only used it for deadlift and benchpress. Very time consuming in the middle weeks, but worth it. You need to know roughly what your 1 rep max in the excercise you wish to do, so you can figure what 80% of that is, to start the program with. They call for 2 workouts a week.

The program looks like this:

WEEK 1 -

2 sets of 6 reps at 80% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 2 -

3 sets of 6 reps at 80% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 3 -

4 sets of 6 reps at 80% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 4 -

5 sets of 6 reps at 80% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 5 -

6 sets of 6 reps at 80% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 6 -

5 sets of 5 reps at 85% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 7 -

4 sets of 4 reps at 90% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 8 -

3 sets of 3 reps at 95% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 9 -

2 sets of 2 reps at 100% of your max for the excercise

WEEK 10 -

1 set of 1 rep at 105% of your max for the excercise

They recommend taking off for a while to recover (1-3 weeks), then starting the next cycle, taking 80% of your (hopefully) new maximum.

Give it a try.

That's a total of 11-13 weeks to gain 5%, let's say you could lift 100kg you gain 5kg over a lot of time. Maybe this is good when you already lift huge, but i gain more than 5% in a month with the 5x5 once a week. But i'm still quite weak, so that might make the difference....
But worth trying.

Good point, Borreck. I guess I did not make clear that this program is not limited to 5% gains - that is just the base goal. You would start the next cycle at 80% of WHATEVER your new maximum is.

And it is indeed more of a "plateau breaker" for the longer-term lifters.

Ive done a system similar to this.
(in my last year of school, i recently just graduated) worked great for me.. heh.. i went from being a weakling to not too bad.

hell, this routine will more than give you 5% increase... unless your weights are really up there, but once you reach that stage, minimal gains are all you can expect.
come to think of it its been 2 or so months since i last did any of my routine.. its saddening.. but once i start again..heh. man will i enjoy that!